Coincidentally I ditched MPC from my library just yesterday. I've started encoding most of my music in MPC, especially live albums (gapless playback). More than half of my music was in MPC. I finally jumped the boat and had re-ripped all my CDs to MP3 (was doing it 9 hours straight). It's completely for personal reasons. I haven't seen development progress, dependency on some players (although I use foobar2000)...and various reasons. MPC was the topic on HA a few years ago. That's what made me use it. But LAME has progressed a lot since then and the reasons I used MPC for are no longer there since LAME does it perfectly.

Although I'm not frequent poster here...I do read forums daily. I would also like to see separate forums for FLAC/Wavepack, and MPC forum merged into other codecs. However, that's just what I think. I haven't read anything "exciting" on MPC in ages. Most discussions (that I noticed) are lossless related and forum should thrive in directions user wish. Times change, preferences change....forums evolve.

It's a bit off-topic, but if lucid anti-mpc zealots want to have a little fun, here's another hilarious claim coming from the musepack.net circus board.

QUOTE

Once again yet another unrelated "professional analysis". This thread was not meant to discuss Musepack's popularity, competition with other codecs, people's preferences and so on.

1. bla-bla

2. Do you think only "those who have plenty of storage space" use Musepack? Are those people ones with hundreds of gigabytes? The --standard preset's avarage bitrate is around 176kbps, meaning higher quality at lower size than any competition.

The MPC "developer" explicitely ask to not discuss about "competition with other codecs", but four lines after his own disclaimer -- ding! -- a clear statement about... MPC superiority over competitors. Superiority at 176 (wow, that is precise) kbps, precisely where complete listening tests are missing... and this guy blames the few members of this board for their "professional analysis".

But this is just a snack. The big one is coming just after :

3. If you think Musepack is "losing" anything, all the statistics such as the tens of thousands of new visitors to our site each month, increasing usage and discussion of the format all over by users satisfied by the format's top quality, many major companies' interest in our files, Musepack being the top pick other than the popular MP3 according to a Hydrogenaudio survey, being supported by popular software on every possible widely used (and some not so widely used) platform and gaining further support by many unique and new applications, etc, shows otherwise.

(I recall that this message was posted less than one year ago).

• "increase discussion of the format": may I recall why this topic was started? Note that the last message posted on musepack.net is also more than one month old: current activity is even lower than on HA.org MPC boards!• "many major companies interest in our files": too bad that he forgot to name these "big companies". We can't mail them to recall them to support MPC • "...on top (...) according to a Hydrogenaudio survey": here is the lastest poll, MPC is in fourth position, with 11% of use, very far from Vorbis (and MP3 of course). And to finish, a last indicator of MPC growing interest• "being supported by popular software on every possible widely used": no, MPC is supported in popular softwares, and not by them. The compatibility is most often coming from third-party components; native support of MPC is very rare.

Priceless, isn't it ?

____

QUOTE (xmixahlx @ Aug 8 2006, 22:14)

a few other ideas/projects are slowly being worked on (seeking/etc) but nothing to write home about...

seeking? That's indeed a great project! But didn't you consider seeking as useless

QUOTE

musepack will always have a user base due to the 1,000's of GB of musepack audio files out there...

Ah, I see... so MPC is basically attractive for illegal usage? That's indeed a great argument in favor of keeping MPC boards on HA.org.

QUOTE

the format isn't abandoned.

No, but quality improvement (precisely for what people were looking about when they choose to leave MP3 for an exotic format) is more than dormant I would say.

QUOTE

the thread-of-the-week-proclaiming-musepack-dead just isn't adding anything new to the situation.

Yes, it did: it contributed to clean HA.org board a bit in the last hours Finally, MPC is still useful for something else than P2P

It's a bit off-topic, but if lucid anti-mpc zealot wants to have fun, here's another hilarious claim coming from the musepack.net circus board.

QUOTE

Once again yet another unrelated "professional analysis". This thread was not meant to discuss Musepack's popularity, competition with other codecs, people's preferences and so on.

1. bla-bla

2. Do you think only "those who have plenty of storage space" use Musepack? Are those people ones with hundreds of gigabytes? The --standard preset's avarage bitrate is around 176kbps, meaning higher quality at lower size than any competition.

The MPC "developer" explicitely ask to not discuss about "competition with other codecs", but four lines after the disclaimer - ding!- a clear statement about MPC superiority. Superiority at 176 (wow, that is precise) kbps, precisely where complete listening tests are missing... and this guy blames the few members of this board for their "professional analysis".

But this is just a snack. The big one is coming just after :

3. If you think Musepack is "losing" anything, all the statistics such as the tens of thousands of new visitors to our site each month, increasing usage and discussion of the format all over by users satisfied by the format's top quality, many major companies' interest in our files, Musepack being the top pick other than the popular MP3 according to a Hydrogenaudio survey, being supported by popular software on every possible widely used (and some not so widely used) platform and gaining further support by many unique and new applications, etc, shows otherwise.

(I recall that this message was posted less than one year ago).

• "increase discussion of the format": may I recall why this topic was started? Note that the last message posted on musepack.net is also more than one month old.• "many major companies interest in our files": too bad that he forgot to name these "big companies". We can't mail them to recall them to support MPC • "...on top (...) according to a Hydrogenaudio survey": here is the lastest poll, MPC is in fourth position, with 11% of use, very far from Vorbis (and MP3 of course). And to finish, a last indicator of MPC growing interest• "being supported by popular software on every possible widely used": no, MPC is supported in popular softwares, and not by them. The compatibility is most often coming from third-party components; native support of MPC is very rare.

Priceless, isn't it ?

i'm not sure why you bother...

QUOTE (guruboolez @ Aug 8 2006, 13:45)

QUOTE (xmixahlx @ Aug 8 2006, 22:14)

a few other ideas/projects are slowly being worked on (seeking/etc) but nothing to write home about...

seeking? That's indeed a great project! But didn't you consider seeking as useless

i don't care about seeking, personally. i'm still not sure why that matters...

QUOTE (guruboolez @ Aug 8 2006, 13:45)

QUOTE

musepack will always have a user base due to the 1,000's of GB of musepack audio files out there...

Ah, I see... so MPC is basically attractive for illegal usage? That's indeed a great argument in favor of keeping MPC boards on HA.org.

no. just like every other format doesn't exist solely for illegal usage. i have about 100GB of legal live music in musepack format, for instance - but thanks for another obviously ignorant point.

QUOTE (guruboolez @ Aug 8 2006, 13:45)

QUOTE

the format isn't abandoned.

No, but quality improvement (precisely for what people were looking about when they choose to leave MP3 for an exotic format) is more than dormant I would say.

you aren't adding anything new here... everyone can see (musepack is open source now) that the psymodel isn't evolving. those same people can see that usability is evolving (especially for *NIX). how you can make those well-understood ideas an argument is interesting.

QUOTE (guruboolez @ Aug 8 2006, 13:45)

QUOTE

the thread-of-the-week-proclaiming-musepack-dead just isn't adding anything new to the situation.

Yes, it did: it contributed to clean HA.org board a bit in the last hours Finally, MPC is still useful for something else than P2P

contribution? ok... if by that you mean "less-organized in a streamlined sort of way..." honestly, i don't think it will matter either way. i'd always support being more organized. that's just how i am. but i'm not going to argue about it.

i can see as everyone else can that musepack isn't an active topic here any more.

no. just like every other format doesn't exist solely for illegal usage. i have about 100GB of legal live music in musepack format, for instance - but thanks for another obviously ignorant point.

100 GB? And where are the 900 other GB of legal MPC that are supposed to be here to prove that MPC "isn't dead"? Where could people find them?

QUOTE

you aren't adding anything new here... everyone can see (musepack is open source now) that the psymodel isn't evolving. those same people can see that usability is evolving (especially for *NIX). how you can make those well-understood ideas an argument is interesting.

Building support for Commodore 64 and Atari ST is not exactly the kind of argument users are waiting for.BTW, no need watch the source to see that MPC isn't progressing. VQF is still closed source and everyone can guess that the format is dead.

@CiTay: What I love isn't MPC but respect for other people. Seeing some "influent" person fooling other people with rotten arguments (superior quality at high bitrate without any proof, superior performance of transcoding based anything but listening test, claim abouts "big companies" imminent MPC' support, claims about growing audience of the format, fog with SV8, or SV7.5, etc...) is going against this respect. HA.org was originally intended to be as scientific or objective as possible. Whatever the format, as long as mythologic arguments will be posted on this board, I will continue to fight them to my best of my ability and my knowledge. As administrator with moderating right, it is also your duty.

What I did is to post some example of the way people involved in MPC developement are thinking (and acting). With such guys supposed to improve the format, it's easy to guess that MPC won't progress anymore and will only survive by trying to maintain an "audiophile superiority" aura obtained somewhere during 2000 and 2001 and objectively lost in the meantime. Such attitude could only fool new and uninformed users. There's no place for marketing on this board - even if it comes from an open-source software.

it's easy to guess that MPC won't progress anymore and will only survive by trying to maintain an "audiophile superiority" aura obtained somewhere during 2000 and 2001 and objectively lost in the meantime. Such attitude could only fool new and uninformed users. There's no place for marketing on this board - even if it comes from an open-source software.

Scarily coherent.

--------------------

Get up-to-date binaries of Lame, AAC, Vorbis and much more at RareWares:http://www.rarewares.org

guruboolez, assuming MPC is dead, then you're a necrophiliac. Don't make me close the thread, guys.

well just to be precise, it was me who said that mpc is dead.. so it would be more accurate to call myself the necrophiliac but.. if I want to be less offtopic I would say.. don't complicate things.. we all know, that using mpc leads nowhere nowdays, so why bother with MPC forum when no one really needs it?But of course you're an admin here.. do what you please with it.. I don't really care, just wanted to be little practical

Whatever the format, as long as mythologic arguments will be posted on this board, I will continue to fight them to my best of my ability and my knowledge.

The quotes you posted here come from a different forum. I can understand when you vigorously fight certain cloudy statements, since you apply academic measures to it just like it should be. What i find strange is the effort you put in, gathering statistics about forum section usage and so on. Thanks for the suggestions about the forums, as i said i merged the two subsections and that will be enough for now. I like to keep it as such to simplify browsing for now. Maybe those topics will be mass-moved at some point.

P.S. With Necrophiliac i meant someone who rapes something that is "dead".

I think Guru's mission is a valid and noble one. Until there's a public listening test at ~192 kbps (and I don't mean soundexpert as this seems to deliver results opposite of traditional testing so its validity is questionable, especially when considering how it wreaks havoc on the psymodels) or even 128 kbps that includes MPC, it would seem that a handful of format fanatics (and seemingly influential ones in the MPC dev scene) are destined to live in the past glory of MPC's superiority and simply ignore the improvements of the competition or pretend they don't exist. It is troubling to see.

If you're still using MPC, that's fine...but don't justify it with bogus, trumped up claims that bear little in the way of reality.

And perhaps the mods can put a deadline for MPC subforum dissolution...say, at end of the year, December 2006, they'll move it to the general audio codecs forum unless by some miracle, some astonishingly great developments in MPC land come to fruition (which will, of course, require defining). Just another suggestion for compromise on this hot, touchy topic.

And perhaps the mods can put a deadline for MPC subforum dissolution...say, at end of the year, December 2006, they'll move it to the general audio codecs forum unless by some miracle, some astonishingly great developments in MPC land come to fruition (which will, of course, require defining). Just another suggestion for compromise on this hot, touchy topic.

I don't see the need for any contrived "deadline".

About the seperate sections for some lossless formats, i will look into it, however, it's going to be a mess to sort the existing topics into those. Maybe if i'm bored someday soon.

well just to be precise, it was me who said that mpc is dead.. so it would be more accurate to call myself the necrophiliac but..

Thank you for defending me, but...I also share this idea. Let me explain.Instead of debating about what death for a format is, we should start to define what a "living format is". There are different criterions.

Is development a condition? I would definitely say "no". If LAME project would stop, who could seriously pretend that MP3 is dead? With more than 100 millions MP3 players sold in one year, such claim would appear as completely insane.

So popularity is indeed the first condition for a format to live. With a user basis of millions persons, I think that we could seriously considering a format as still living. With 10000 persons worldwide, it's a bit more problematic. With 100 users, yes, the format should be considered as "dead". Yes, but MP3 had no more than 100 users at the very begining and there are now millions. So what matters is not only the number but also the trend. A format with a small but growing community is maybe stronger than a format with a deflating basis.

So let recap my position. To live or to be considered as alive, a format must have an huge amount of users or at least a growing community. Development and hardware support are not a direct condition; but with a halt-development we can expect to see the user basis quickly decreasing; and with no hardware support, it's hard to imagine the community becoming a big one. Other arguments like: open-source, marketing campaign, etc... have a direct influence on both essential criterions but are not directly a part of "life". It would be hard to call VQF a living format even if Yamaha would decide to make new advertisings for it.

Now let examine Musepack position:- user basis: impossible to evaluate but probably very small. MPC is known to be a niche.- user trend: impossible too, but we have some interesting elements with HA's polls. MPC was on top with 30% of voting people in 2001 source. It constantly decreased with subsequent polls and finally reach 11% on the last one. It's a huge fall! Other element of answer: the lack of activity in various MPC forums (the subject of this thread) here and on the official MPC board. There were much more litterature about musepack four years ago. So obviously the user basis of MPC isn't growing (and if it grows we should conclude that new MPC users don't like forums and polls at all).

So in my opinion MPC is dead. It not only has few users but the amount of people using it is decreasing. There are probably small MPC community spreaded over the net but the existence of a small community sharing 1000 or even 10.000 GB of MPC material (legal or not) can't be considered as a sign of life. The corpse is only moving by the energy of small worms but that's all. It's dead, unless new elements will encourage new people to use it and revive MPC. These elements may be: active development, clear superiority, strong efficiency (efficient encoders are always most popular than high-bitrate only ones), etc...

QUOTE

we all know, that using mpc leads nowhere nowdays, so why bother with MPC forum when no one really needs it?

foobar2000 plays and converts to and from .mpc very elegantly, and should continue to do so for the forseeable future. Although my iPod doesn't support .mpc, I can't tell the difference when I transcode to .mp4, and I could use Rockbox if I didn't want to transcode.

My MPCs will never die. They will be a reminder of times before lossless, before foobar2000, and of friends and good times. They'll still be as transparent as the day I (or other people ) ripped them. I say let the forums stick around as a reminder, as a history. It was quite the ride, if nothing else.

The original point was about the fact that nobody seems to use these forums anymore and that MPC isn't really an attractive format. So it was suggested to remove them (and it was also suggested to restructate different elements in the same row).Do you know any reason to keep a forum if you and all other persons are not really contributing to stay active? Personnaly, I don't.

There's indeed no reason to remove parts that are not used anymore but there's a need to create new ones (like dedicated lossless forums) and another one to not overburden the board with useless forums. That's why closing the MPC one looks as a relevant suggestion.

QUOTE (CiTay @ Aug 9 2006, 00:43)

The quotes you posted here come from a different forum.

The quotes, yes. The all mythologic or doubtful statement about quality, etc... are still posted here from time to time.

QUOTE

What i find strange is the effort you put in, gathering statistics about forum section usage and so on.

Because these statistic are teaching us that MPC original vigour is apparently lost. No messages anymore and less users on polls compared to the early time: it has a signification. For a lot of people there's no need to defend the idea of MPC's collapse because it's obvious. For some others self-centered persons, defending the idea that MPC is still a living format just because they have two hard disks filled with MPC files, it's another story. Hence the need of collecting some evidence about MPC's collapse.

QUOTE

P.S. With Necrophiliac i meant someone who rapes something that is "dead".

Stating the obvious about MPC from time to time isn't really a rape I'd say. But what about using MPC: isn't it gerontophilia?

Building support for Commodore 64 and Atari ST is not exactly the kind of argument users are waiting for.BTW, no need watch the source to see that MPC isn't progressing. VQF is still closed source and everyone can guess that the format is dead.

It's open-source, or "Code it and add it yourself if you're unhappy". For some people, wide decoding support is important. It certainly was for me. Libmpcdec works on almost every known platform. Mplayer and VLC added support for it. I know I will not depend anymore on some winamp plugins to listen to mpc files on linux.

About attacks on the musepack.net siteInitial goals were :- to set up a unique place where all mpc related cod and binaries could be downloaded. (ok)- to set up a sample database with problematic samples (dead)- update xmms/gtk code. (ok)And a few other things I forgot. It's quite similar to some todo Frank Klemm posted about musepack a long time ago on those forums (Donation thread).

While I don't necessarily agree with how the site is currently handled, I also find the current 'anti-mpc' crusade on HA pointless. The codec, if dead, will fade away naturally without all the fuss and drama around. Deleting the forums can't be backed up by any valid argument.

QUOTE (guruboolez @ Aug 9 2006, 01:00)

The corpse is only moving by the energy of small worms

Thanks

This post has been edited by Lefungus: Aug 9 2006, 00:29

--------------------

It's a 'Jump to Conclusions Mat'. You see, you have this mat, with different CONCLUSIONS written on it that you could JUMP TO.

It's open-source, or "Code it and add it yourself if you're unhappy". For some people, wide decoding support is important. It certainly was for me. Libmpcdec works on almost every known platform. Mplayer and VLC added support for it. I know I will not depend anymore on some winamp plugins to listen to mpc files on linux.

The point of the debate isn't to see if adding support for Solaris or even Linux important is, but if such development could be used as argument to say if the format is dead or not. If someone would hack a vqf decoder and then code tons of plug-ins for a myriad of players working on all existing OS, would someone say: "hey, look, vqf is living again?" I doubt so. Therefore, coding new support for rare platforms doesn't really count as argument prooving that a format is alive rather than dead.

Anyway, most people are using Windows. Moreover, people using high-quality encoders are usually looking for additional improvements rather than support for FreeBSD. People are happy when a new release of LAME, Nero Digital or aoTuV is done - not when the source code is successfully compiled on an esoteric OS. This is what a majority of person are expecting. Do you imagine the success of the PC Donation campaign if it was done on the theme of "library maintenance"? Frank Klemm would earn a new mouse, at best...

QUOTE

While I don't necessarily agree with how the site is currently handled, I also find the current 'anti-mpc' crusade on HA pointless.

Another crusade? Wow!You know, several formats disappeared from the scene without any noise: vqf, mp3pro, realaudio, atrac... Why is there problem with MPC in your opinion? Isn't it linked to the fact that some person very fond of this format are still posting unverified, outdated or simply wrong claims about different kind of self-proclaimed superior points over other formats?

QUOTE

Deleting the forums can't be backed up by any valid argument.

Again, why burden the board with deserted forums? WMA, VQF, MP3Pro, ATRAC didn't own their own couple of forums on HA.org foundation;if only active or popular ones got their dedicated boards it was for a reason: clarity and usefulness. Now MPC isn't active nor attractive, even on the specialized board which was the birthplace of MPC community. So it would be logical to put MPC where it now belongs: in the potpourri forum called 'other lossy formats' among atrac, vqf and wma. And to give instead a dedicated place for the new popular formats like flac or wavpack.

Do you know any reason to keep a forum if you and all other persons are not really contributing to stay active? Personnaly, I don't.

As a knowledge repository. I don't see the advantage of taking it out. By the way, never used, probably never will use MPC.

What kind of knowledge should members expect from messages posted in 2002 about outdated versions of an unsignificant format? Information about --xlevel? Features of the upcoming SV8? A debate about Buschman/Klemm encoders? Old topics are only confusing for new members. "Hey, I read somewhere that --nmt 16 --tmn 32 is near lossless. So why isn't --quality 10 recommanded instead"? Answer: --quality 10 was coded one year later...Most answers to most questions are also outdated. Who would still suggest mpxchange or old mpc->mp3 app? What about all dead links?

Anyway, there's no need to delete the archive. MPC messages could easily be moved into the 'other formats' compost. Such massive transfer from one forum to another wont hurt the current aspect of the new forum, because most MPC threads will immediately sink into the depths of this section. Ratworms interested by old MPC debates would easily found them whatever the section they are stored.

What kind of knowledge should members expect from messages posted in 2002 about outdated versions of an unsignificant format?

Anyway, there's no need to delete the archive. MPC messages could easily be moved into the 'other formats' compost. Such massive transfer from one forum to another wont hurt the current aspect of the new forum, because most MPC threads will immediately sink into the depths of this section. Ratworms interested by old MPC debates would easily found them whatever the section they are stored.

You never know. Moving it to the "other formats" would be worst. Cause it would be merged with formats that one day can be mainstrean. I think is better to add a sticky/notice at the top, explaining the current situation.